We’re currently on ‘holiday’ visiting my in laws. It’s an annual thing as they live a flight away and otherwise we’d never see them.
I’m frustrated yet again, because they cannot seem to grasp that a baby/toddler needs to nap at relatively fixed times each day, and has a bedtime that can’t be moved hours later to suit their own plans. We are now on DC3 so we’ve had almost ten years of “oh she’ll just fall asleep when she’s tired”, “I know you say she’s hungry at 12pm but we have lunch at 1.30pm so she can play until then”, “no one eats before 8pm here, all these other kids just stay up until 11pm, she’ll just sleep in later”.
Our kids have never “just fallen asleep” when they are tired. They just get totally overtired and hysterical. They never sleep later if they go to bed late, they just wake at 6pm exhausted. I don’t know many kids who can wait almost two hours after their usual lunchtime for a meal.
So we either have an exhausted, miserable baby, or huffy in-laws who are cross at how precious and inflexible we are. DH is stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m up all night with the kids anyway as none of them sleep well, so I’m exhausted and just want a bit of peace in the day and all I’m doing is placating a baby that needs more rest! Or alternatively putting my foot down and being a kill joy. Everyone wants to do everything together (apart from me!)
How do others manage this? Do I just suck it up? It’s no holiday...